“The conventional use of words and of narrative structure is deliberately subverted in decadent fiction; language deviates from the established norms in an attempt to reproduce pathology on a textual level. With its emphasis on aberration and artifice, the decadents'… — Asti Hustvedt Copy Share Image
“Adornment, exoticism, affectation are all willed decadent strategies meant to pervert the texts they made. Decadent texts often live in their descriptive excursions, in their evocation of dreams, mysterious places and states of mind, in their excess of words, not… — Asti Hustvedt Copy Share Image
“Like symbolism, decadence puts forth the idea that the function of literature is to evoke impressions and 'correspondences', rather than to realistically depict the world. ... the decadent aestheticized decay and took pleasure in perversity. In decadent literature, sickness is preferable to health, not only because sickness was regarded as more interesting, but because sickness was construed as subversive, as… — Asti Hustvedt Copy Share
“The photograph, then, becomes a representation of a representation of a disease that represents. In other words, in order to produce the most perfect images of hysteria, the hysteric – a woman whose illness simulates the symptoms of other diseases – was transformed, through hypnosis, into an artificial hysteric who perfectly simulated the simulations of hysteria. The medical photograph becomes… — Asti Hustvedt Copy Share
“By living a life “against nature,” the deviant or pervert becomes a hero or heroine in decadent fiction.” — Asti Hustvedt Copy Share Image
“The conventional use of words and of narrative structure is deliberately subverted in decadent fiction; language deviates from the established norms in an attempt… — Asti Hustvedt Copy Share Image
“Adornment, exoticism, affectation are all willed decadent strategies meant to pervert the texts they made. Decadent texts often live in their descriptive excursions, in… — Asti Hustvedt Copy Share Image
“In the end, this volume should be read a s a collection of love stories, Above all, they are tales of love, not the… — Asti Hustvedt Copy Share Image
“The New or Future Eve is emptied of all inner life and turned into a shell. The bitter irony in this is that her… — Asti Hustvedt Copy Share Image
